absolved by the sky
by callmesandy
Summary: Pepper says, "Fine and good isn't just 'I'm no longer bleeding from twenty places,' fine and good is that you're not bleeding at all."


Notes: not mine, no profit garnered. Opening quote and title from Carleen Tibbetts's James Dean Transcends the Infinite Lack. Thanks to A for beta help! For the gwyo setting bingo spot seen below.

* * *

 _Stars feel they must go home to die in you._  
 _Reader, please find an elegance._  
 _Please know you are absolved by the sky._  
 _Nobody really knows anyone._

Tony still has suits, he has them everywhere. He's retired officially, but he's hardly some sort of idiot. Mostly these days, mostly he tries to clean things up, he has the money even though Cap runs everything. Steve has the superheroing covered, and Rhodey, and Tony has suits everywhere and he stares at the ceiling above every bed he sleeps in. Sleep is maybe not the word.

He's better, of course. He's completely recovered from the Witch playing with his brain, absolutely, and he doesn't have panic attacks. He hardly ever feels guilty about Ultron, so it's forgive and forget all around. He sleeps badly but no one really notices besides Pepper.

She would notice since she sleeps next to him and frequently more than just sleep happens. They've been together for years. Years and years which is more than he deserves but he's greedy and wants even more. It's astonishing to everyone.

"I have to tell Laura, seriously, she forwards all these insane blind items implying you and I are breaking up, a cover for your many many gay liaisons, we broke up but we're just pretending, I'm pregnant, I'm on heroin, you're on heroin -"

"Not for years on any of that drug stuff for sure," Tony says. "Are you saying it would be okay for me to have gay liaisons?"

"Who do you have in mind?" She smiles at him.

"Who don't I have in mind?" He has to kiss her. He leans over and moves Pepper's tablet away. "I'm going to make a rule that we don't bring our phones and tablets to bed."

"You're going to make a rule?"

"I'm going to propose a rule," he says.

"I'm pretty sure you're going to be the first to break that proposal," Pepper says.

He floats the idea of a farm to Pepper and she gives him this look that shuts him up so fast. She gets up and puts on her $500 heels and $1200 skirt all while glaring at him. "Do you actually know me?"

"I'd hate it, too," Tony says. "I can't imagine the work I'd have to do to have enough power for everything I want to do on a regular basis."

He can imagine and he spends the next two days tinkering and drawing schematics and resisting the urge to call Vision to just come and stand behind him and talk. He misses his electronic assistant which is absolutely pathetic. Until Pepper says it, too. "I guess you can't just still use his voice," she says, wistfully. "I don't like this new girl."

"She can hear you," Tony says.

"I'm sure you've programmed her to not take things like that personally," Pepper says.

"That's a good idea," Tony says.

He gives her the schematics for creating large reservoirs of power even in a rural setting. She shakes her head. "We're still not moving anywhere that's more than 10 miles from a city that has a fashion week."

"Lots of cities have fashion weeks," Tony says. He knows that much. Friday starts listing them in his ear.

"I'm sorry, I'll be more precise. No more than 10 miles from either Manhattan, Paris, Milan, London or Los Angeles," Pepper says.

"We don't own anything in Milan," he says.

"We will," Pepper says and she emails him the deed for a lovely house in Milan the very next day. "See you in a few days," she writes at the bottom, because she knows him.

He spends three days in Milan transforming the house on in the inside, at least, to somewhere he can defend himself, Pepper and civilians in the surrounding city. He always need faster internet and he has to have a lot of power and a place to tinker for all values of tinker. He stays an extra day because he's being fitted for an absurdly expensive suit, the kind of made of wool and other blends of expensive animal linen and where someone asks if he dresses left or right.

"How are you doing, really?" Pepper compliments the suit, suggests a number of places they can go while he wears it. The entire bathroom is being remodeled and last night Pepper had the new bed delivered. So Milan is officially one of their homes. "Tony?"

"I'm fine," he says. "Look at the suit."

"Uh huh," she says.

"I'm good," he says. "No panic attacks."

"That's not how we judge," she says. "Fine and good isn't just 'I'm no longer bleeding from twenty places,' fine and good is that you're not bleeding at all."

He sees with clear vision that this is the make it or break it and she might stay with him for months or even years after this but it will really all be over tonight if he says nothing.

He says, "I'm bleeding from less than ten places. It's the clean up, the neverending New York City clean up, the Washington DC rebuilding, the work in Sokovia, the feeling I will never catch up with anything and every five minutes someone is bothering me to tell me one more thing they read in SHIELD's records about something my father did or Obadiah, and I know I need to read them through, but frankly, frankly, I'm still wondering where Bruce went and if he's coming back like I don't need my friend, and have I mentioned the mess everyone keeps making of the compound? Five trips by the plumbers."

"How are they clogging the pipes that much?" Pepper frowns. "I think we're going to start with that problem."

She really does fly out to the compound to find out why the pipes are getting clogged so consistently. "Have ruled out super serum effects on feces," she emails him with a smiley face after it.

Maria Hill comes back to his office and sits herself outside it. "Pepper sent me."

"To do what?"

"I'm going to scan all the released SHIELD records for mentions of you, your father, Obadiah Stane, and Pepper, I suppose. I'll compile a report and get it to you daily," Maria says. "That's why Pepper sent me. She's paying me an obscene salary."

"She's the best," Tony says.

"Yeah," Maria says, looking genuinely confused. "I never understand why she's with you."

He edits out a number of horrible remarks he could make, and says, "I have no idea either."

The Falcon has this ridiculous idea of team bonding by going to an amusement park, and invites Tony, he assumes because Sam thinks this might get Pepper out of the compound and away from the pipes. Tony goes anyway and rides some horrible twisty roller coaster with Rhodey. "You're supposed to bond with people you don't know," Rhodey says. "They're good people."

"I'm too old for new friends," Tony says. "This is the least frightening roller coaster ever."

"To you," Rhodey says. "And me."

Wanda is paler than normal when they all get off and nearly throws up on Sam Wilson's shoes. That would have been some real bonding.

The original contractors fucked up one section of pipe, Pepper reports. She has it fixed and goes back to sleeping next to him.

She says, "The way you take on these clean ups, it's like it's your fault."

"I have some culpability in all of them. No one else can afford it," Tony says. "Let's spend some of that weapon money beating swords into earthquake proof struts for a new building or two."

"You don't need so much expiation," she says. "At the very least more people should help you."

"Thank you for Hill, by the way," he says. His father was certainly hiding a lot from him. So far it's only mildly shocking but Hill isn't up to the 60s yet. He looks at her reports and tries to imagine the man he knew not at all and how he'd learned to shoot a gun extremely well and his friendships with mobsters. So far, Howard's body count is under Tony's, though Tony never gives him complete credit for his war work and the Manhattan project. But son and father are inching closer.

Vision stops by and they make some progress on the Sokovia rebuilding project. "The problem with DC and Manhattan, of course, is that the damn government got involved and that way inevitably leads to corruption."

Vision says, "Yes, I recall how very much money you've received from them."

"There's this disaster in Hell's Kitchen, that asshole in Alexandria who tried to scam the Potomac cleaning," Tony says. "If I could just pay for everything."

"That seems like a very foolish idea," Vision says. "Despite the corruption, the government exists for exactly this reason, to take on projects for the public good."

"I'd do it," Tony says, and knows he's whining.

The next day Vision suggests a specific charitable foundation for repairing Avengers damage - "That's a horrible name, you know," Tony adds. Pepper knows the right person to put in charge of it.

It doesn't stop him from having to put on his finest suit from Milan and meet with various security agencies and angry people from all over the world in an "informal discussion" at the UN. Every bit of it makes Tony head hurt and he remembers he always used to push this shit off to Obadiah. Since he's discovered the man was Hydra, he remembers it with an added twist of hurt.

"Shouldn't you be doing this?"

Pepper looks over her shoulder at him. "I'm not an Avenger," she says. "Remember? I have a job. A very busy job."

"I meant as my girlfriend," Tony says, already feeling what a dumb idea that is.

He spends the night on his knees, between her legs, making her laugh until she has effectively communicated that she is her own person and as his girlfriend and Stark Industries CEO she will not be dealing with any of his legal difficulties or international movements.

Maria Hill comes into his lab, her expression serious, even for her. She puts down the report she's put together and then she says, "I'm going to call Pepper." She turns and leaves.

"So this is bad," Tony says. The lab is silent, somehow every quiet click and burble has gone away, like even the room knows to hold its breath. Except Dum-E squeaks as it inches closer.

By the time Pepper arrives he has pulverized two of his work stations, he is destroying everything he touches. Pepper walks around so she is in front of him. She says, "Your parents were murdered."

"By Cap's bestest friend," Tony says. "The one he can't stop looking for."

Pepper does not say the arguments Tony is already hearing in his head, the logical arguments about how poor Barnes was brainwashed, the sheer amount of torture involved he thought what he was doing right so no court would convict him and it's like blaming a robot programmed to kill. Pepper doesn't say anything.

"My parents were murdered," Tony says.

"It wasn't an accident," Pepper says. She rushes him with some kind of incredibly enveloping hug so he somehow can't even yell. "That's not what you thought happened."

"Not in the slightest," Tony says. "I thought Dad was drunk or a bad driver or just general hubris and the world laughs at your plans, you build a bomb but you die smashing into a tree."

She holds him tighter which he didn't think was possible. He closes his eyes in his blinding rage.

Pepper tricks him into bed by saying "maybe you need some sleep, you've been up for hours."

He says, "He always loved her, you know. More than me. No matter what Nick says. He told me once, when he was drunk, that he'd had sex with close to 200 women and then there was only one since he met my mother. Just my mother. Then he said to get out because I was lousy company, which in retrospect was not so wrong, I was a sober 14 year old and he was a drunk old man sitting in his kitchen."

"Tell me about your mother," Pepper says.

"She wasn't a natural blonde but she dyed her hair on a regular regimented basis and I honestly had no idea until I was 17 and she told me. She was very sweet. She managed to love him and me about as much which, as I said, not something my father managed," Tony says. "She was sweet, she was kind, she kept telling me he was a good man. Which it turns out he was, mostly, unlike so many of the people he worked with. Good enough to be targeted to be killed."

"Where was your mother from?"

"You are so tired of my daddy issues," Tony says. He runs his hands down her back. Her eyes are red. "I'm just like him, by the way. Since we got together, I've never had sex with anyone else."

"But not since we met. How did your parents meet?"

He stares at this night's ceiling. "I have no idea. No one ever told me. Why didn't anyone tell me?" He lets go of Pepper to rub his eyes. "My mother was third generation American, unlike Dad who was only second. She was from the Basque region, if you can believe that. Her family was. She spoke languages I didn't recognize and she learned Hungarian from Ana. But I have no idea how they met."

Pepper kisses him, it feels oddly desperate and longing. He doesn't know what she's worried about. He is angry at everyone. "How long do you think Steve's known?"

Pepper sighs. "How was he supposed to tell you?"

"A person, if you know a person's parents were murdered and did not die in an accident, it's a good thing to tell them," Tony says. "It's a good thing."

"I love you," she says.

"I love you, too, how scared of me are you right now?"

Pepper says, "Scared for you. Because I don't know what I would do with this news. There's a lot going on now."

"That's an understatement. I don't even know how they met."

They have sex, awesome sex, even though it's more awe inspiring than hot and heavy post your sex tape sex. They are connected, he has Pepper and she has him.

He sits by Peggy Carter's bed for most of the day. Her family visit regularly, and Steve, too, but she still can go a day or two with no one there so she welcomes him. She thinks he's Howard a few times. For an hour she just sits quietly, staring at nothing. He sits back and lets her be in her illness. He holds her hand.

She says, "Hydra. Bastards." But Tony knows no one told her about Hydra's infiltration of SHIELD. It would be too cruel. She talks like Steve is still gone, and she remembers he's back and she talks like it's still the war and she and Steve are having naughty relations all over the place. Sometimes all in the same sentence.

He says, "I wanted to talk about Maria, if you want, Agent Carter."

"Why did your father make you call me that? I never minded Peggy," she says. "Maria. Maria. The way Howard looks at her. Even after all these years. It's impossible to reconcile with the man I knew before."

"He never cheated on her," Tony says. "Can you tell me how they met?"

"Maria? Maria. Maria was Ana's friend. Ana went to synagogue," Peggy says. She is silent for a long few minutes. Then she says, "Ana told me the story of Hannah, Hannah was barren in the Torah, she went to the temple and the priest thought she was drunk."

"The rabbis say she was the first to pray. She begged God for a child. The rabbi thought she was a drunk and went to tell her off. Ana told me that story. She said from this we learn women do things first and men don't understand what they did," Tony says.

"She told me that, too," Peggy says. "She went to synagogue on Saturday mornings and she was walking home sad, very sad. She had her head down and she was crying. I don't know why. Ana's always so positive, she dealt with, she was shot because of me and she survived but she can't have children."

"It's not your fault," Tony says. "It's the fault of the person who shot the bullet."

"I know, I know," Peggy says. She waves her hand at him. "She walks right into this woman, knocked her over and then Maria, she knocked over Maria, she just abandoned her plans for the day to walk this crying lady home and made sure she felt better."

"That sounds like Mom," Tony says.

Peggy touches his cheek. "You look more like Howard," she says. She says, "So there's Ana and Jarvis and Maria all chatting in the kitchen and Howard came in to ask for something from Jarvis and there she was. I saw him two days later and he'd already decided to marry her. I tried to talk him out of it. You're rushing, I said. I was wrong, though."

"Probably," Tony says. "Do you want to talk more about Ana and Jarvis? They were some of my favorite people."

"Me as well," Peggy says, smiling. He stays another hour to make her smile and because, fuck it, actually, he never does talk about the Jarvises with anyone.

"They were good people," Pepper says later. They're eating very ethically farmed shrimp at a restaurant Tony generally hates. Pepper loves it so he goes.

"Much better than my daddy issues," Tony says.

"Howard Stark was a good man, you're a better one. You don't see it," she says.

The next day he enlists Natasha to help him with the UN and the other security agencies. He looks at her relaxed face and he knows she knows. He'd never be mad at her for not telling him something. Her loyalties go Hawkeye, Fury, Bruce, Steve, and Tony not even at the bottom. He's not on the list. "They're going to do something, Agent Romanoff. If we're doing the negotiating, we have control."

"Control is important," she says. There are probably a hundred meanings behind her words but he doesn't want to parse them.

"We've destroyed things, places, people, it's not a bad idea to bring in some oversight."

"You think the UN is the way to go?" He can't even tell if she's being wry.

"If we don't work with them now, they will do this themselves later. I have complete faith in you," he says.

Naturally, Steve shows up just as Tony is learning to live with this bullshit. Naturally, he's angry. He says, "Why are you searching for Bucky?"

"Maybe because he murdered my parents," Tony says. "I thought you'd appreciate the help."

Steve backs up. He says, "I'm sorry. I guess you think I should have told you that."

"Screw you, I don't care. But yes, we're going to find Barnes. Before someone else does. And I know, I know, he's your best friend and none of it's his fault, he didn't even know what he was doing, blah blah blah," Tony says, realizing he's yelling towards the end. "Screw you."

"I'm sorry," Steve says. "I always liked Howard."

Tony rolls his eyes. "I bet you did. I promise, when my considerable resources and your poking around finds Barnes, you can hug him back to sanity to your heart's extent. I just don't want Hydra or whomever to get their hands on him. I'd also like to punch him in the face, but hey, bygones, right?"

Steve just looks at him, calmly. Always a good soldier. Such a dick. He assumes that's what Steve sees when he looks at Tony, an absolute dick.

He lays in bed with Pepper and he says, "I still sleep for shit, if you noticed."

"I did notice," she says.

He closes his eyes and says, "You should be married to me."

"I should be? That's not a question." She straddles him, he opens his eyes to her smile.

"Why aren't we married? That's nuts. I don't want to sleep with anyone else, not really, I hope you don't, we make each other happy. My parents were married for years. We should already be at years," he says.

"I'm not wed to the idea of marriage, it's not the greatest institution," she says. "It doesn't fit a lot of people."

"It would fit us," he says.

"You think so?" She leans down, her hands on his chest.

"I do," he says. "We should do it."

"Okay," she says. Then she kisses him, not desperate at all.

Pepper says she doesn't care about big or small, courthouse or whatever, so they do it as a surprise to their friends and families. Throw a party, get married in the middle of it. Pepper wears blue. Tony wears his suit from Milan.

That night, Pepper is very drunk, rolling around on the bed while he smiles at her. She says, "Do you know what I did tonight? I told everyone how we met. We can have babies and they'll know how we met."

"Babies?"

"Only children end up a little creepy sometimes. Like you," she says, grinning at him.

"But not twins," Tony says. "Speaking of creepy."

"Sometimes, absolutely."

She falls asleep wrapped around him, drooling on his chest.

He touches his ring, his simple ring and spins it. He starts sleeping through the night without nightmares, its weight on his finger a kind of Ambien.


End file.
